Will mankind make it to the next century?

With global warming, pollution and rapidly dwindling energy sources, the future looks extremely bleak. Will mankind adapt to the changing circumstances and survive? Or will we be wiped out by our own follies and foolish indulgences?

It is imperative that measures be taken to save the earth and the various life forms that reside on it. The rising mercury is making many places uninhabitable and turning forests into deserts. Islands are at an risk of vanishing completely in the ever-increasing depths of the oceans. With all these alarming changes, what will be the fate of humanity in the next century?

Will mankind make it to the next century?

no century ahead!!!!!!!!

due to the global warming we humans r not going to survive any more !!!!! hearing in every part of the world deaths due to tsunami , floods etc .the waterlevel is increasing and increasing.thats really impossible to cross a century !! i say that we will just die after some 10 or 20 years

Will mankind make it to the next century?

Human Ingenuity

Whilst the threats to human existence are legion, varying from climate change to the threat of nuclear holocaust, the instances in history where individuals and groups alike have worked beneath the shadow of destruction are numerous.

Consider the issue of sustaining global populations raised by Malthus and Boserup, the former proposing the inevitability of population regression due to limits on foods production.

Boserup's view, asserting some years later that technological innovation would offer a solution, is validated by the industrialisation of agriculture, the expansion of free trade, and the plethora of scientific advances increasing yield efficiency. A very specific example indeed, and one not without controversy (especially where scientific advances are concerned), but it does evidence the ability of homosapiens to adapt and endure.

The issue it seems is not whether humanity will last the century, but whether it can do so with a clear conscience.

While the proposition's argument here is largely correct, they fail to consider the arising of any threats that humans cannot adapt to.

An extreme example would be a meteor strike - a suspected cause of the mass extinctions in prehistory. Human space technology is insufficient currently to deal with such an event, and certainly decadent Western societies (with poor survival skills) would be the first to go. If the strike were severe enough, the human population could conceivably die out.

However, this is highly unlikely to happen before 2100.

Will mankind make it to the next century?

Survival of the Fittest

The fact is that humans are at the top of the food chain, and an incredibly diverse and prominent species. Due to our cognitive abilities, we are as a species not only well-adapted to survive, but can adapt easily.

Firstly, we have language skills. The moment one of us figures something out, we can tell everyone else. Unlike species where unless the behaviour becomes instinct, it is lost or only taught to the immediate offspring. Human language allows us to tell enormous groups of people quite quickly about developments.

Secondly, humans have adapted to large obstacles before. We have survived ice ages before (with less excellent technology to help us that we have now), biological changes (the enlarged head to allow for the brain resulted in babies being born more dependent on their mothers, but social groups formed to adapt for that too) and threats from other species using rudimentary (and gradually more skilled) weapons.

Thirdly, our problem-solving skills allow us to tackle problems that arise. Species with no cognitive abilities (jellyfish) or very few ones (cows) cannot adapt to an environmental change in the same way that a human or ape can.

Therefore, it is highly probable that humans will still be around by 2100.

Will mankind make it to the next century?

Probably not

If your religious, the answer is probably as simple as the second coming, however, if you are not, then that makes my job a lot harder. Humans are stupid. It's as simple as that. The holocaust, the Soviet Union during the cold war, and anybody that supports job loss and a dead nation, *cough* (Obama) *cough*, are just a few examples. Frankly, I can't see humans making it very far without any divine intervention, but on the non-religious side of the debate, unless we find goldilocks planet soon, the future isn't looking too bright, especially because of human pollution destroying the quality of our planet.